Damned if you do and damned if you don't - that's where you end up with dramatizations of historical events - but it's all about the objectives of the movie and matching your expectations to those objectives.
The point here is not to get lost in the historical detail - the point is to create a sense of what a character was like, what those surrounding him may have been like, what the prevailing moods might have been like - it's to build a story with human characters within a series of events that we know about.
On this basis it's very hard not to have a lot of admiration for what has been accomplished in this movie.
The environments and goings on within them seem very real - the detail is beyond extensive, with a convincing capture of the activity of life in the early 1800s in a France not long since uprooted by a brutal civil revolution. In fact I'd go so far as to say it does this astonishingly well. Likewise the battle scenes carry a disturbing amount of detail and visceral oomph - this is not an attempt to romanticize the Napoleonic battlefield and make legends.
But for me, this is all the support act for the real work, what might the actual character of Napoleon have been like, and what of his Josephine - how did they relate.
For me Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby did an extraordinary job in creating the environment of intimacy for their respective characters to inhabit and co-inhabit. Ironically, this is one of those points where historians will probably yell, "balderdash!" - but do historians really know people, do they know how people related on a 1-1 level, about who had a real partner in crime, and who didn't, and how they behaved? Historians will no doubt say yes, but the best they have is someone's version of things, subjective and, of necessity, incomplete.
Scott's movie brings the characters of Napoleon and Josephine to life as animated real people. Combined with the detail and realism of the movie in it's other aspects, this makes the whole thing work.
Napoleon is a brilliant accomplishment - make no mistake about it - don't fall for those who would trivialize and belittle it. But, adjust your expectations, and look for the humanity.
The point here is not to get lost in the historical detail - the point is to create a sense of what a character was like, what those surrounding him may have been like, what the prevailing moods might have been like - it's to build a story with human characters within a series of events that we know about.
On this basis it's very hard not to have a lot of admiration for what has been accomplished in this movie.
The environments and goings on within them seem very real - the detail is beyond extensive, with a convincing capture of the activity of life in the early 1800s in a France not long since uprooted by a brutal civil revolution. In fact I'd go so far as to say it does this astonishingly well. Likewise the battle scenes carry a disturbing amount of detail and visceral oomph - this is not an attempt to romanticize the Napoleonic battlefield and make legends.
But for me, this is all the support act for the real work, what might the actual character of Napoleon have been like, and what of his Josephine - how did they relate.
For me Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby did an extraordinary job in creating the environment of intimacy for their respective characters to inhabit and co-inhabit. Ironically, this is one of those points where historians will probably yell, "balderdash!" - but do historians really know people, do they know how people related on a 1-1 level, about who had a real partner in crime, and who didn't, and how they behaved? Historians will no doubt say yes, but the best they have is someone's version of things, subjective and, of necessity, incomplete.
Scott's movie brings the characters of Napoleon and Josephine to life as animated real people. Combined with the detail and realism of the movie in it's other aspects, this makes the whole thing work.
Napoleon is a brilliant accomplishment - make no mistake about it - don't fall for those who would trivialize and belittle it. But, adjust your expectations, and look for the humanity.